When Euripides’ Helen was first produced in 412 B.C., it seems to have created a literary sensation. We have Aristophanes’ word for it. In the Thesmophoriazusae, staged almost certainly at the Dionysia of the following year, the comic poet introduces an old relative of Euripides, who says at line 850 ‘I’m going to copy that newfangled Helen’ τήν καινήν ΈΧένψ μιμήσομαι, and this he proceeds to do by burlesquing four scenes from the tragedy.

Much is said in the text-books about Plato’s hankering after answers to moral questions which would offer scientific accuracy and absolute truth. It is to dialectic it seems that Plato turns in the hope of finding such accuracy. The Republic values Platonic dialectic rather higher than mathematical procedures, if only because the mathematician fails to explain the ultimate terms through which he conducts his inquiry. But the epistemologica! status of mathematics is at least as high as that of physical inquiry, whereas it is certainly higher than that of all this-worldly images. The images of the imitative artist were criticised for their distance from Platonic reality in Book X of the Republic, and it is not at all clear that they differ in this respect from the stories which Plato believes should be used at the commencement of his city’s education programme in Republic II (376e ff.). If myths are images, and images are low in epistemological status in the Republic and related middle period dialogues, then why does Plato use myths so prominently in precisely these dialogues?

The Lament for Adonis or Epitaphios Adonidos has since the mid-sixteenth century commonly been known as ‘Bion 1’. In editions of Greek Bucolic it comes along with four long and four short poems allegedly by Moschus, a number of short poems or fragments by Bion of Smyrna, and a long fragment (32 lines) also since 1568 often attributed to him. This subcollection is sometimes conveniently called ‘Minor Bucolic’: ‘minor’ in relation to the much bulkier surviving work of Theocritus and ‘bucolic’ apparently only by association with him and through the clear reputation of Moschus and Bion in ancient times as bucolic writers. Editions of Minor Bucolic, i.e. Moschus and Bion published other than as an appendix to Theocritus (though sometimes combined with Callimachus, Musaeus, or ‘the Nine Poetesses’), appeared in 1565 (Meetkercke, Bruges), 1568 (Orsini, Rome), 1655 (Whitford, London), 1686 (Longepierre, Paris), and then copiously in the eighteenth century; I count at least eight in the years 1746-1795.

In late 46, Caesar decided not to hold elections for 45, but instead to take the unprecedented step of nominating six or eight officials called praefecti urbi to act in place of the praetors, quaestors and curule aediles. In this way, he made his most openly autocratic inroads into the traditional Republican constitution. Because of the traumatic effect that this had on the governing class and the Roman structure of government, this office, which Caesar completely adapted, deserves special consideration.

The precise relationship between the two accounts of the death of Palinurus in the Aeneid (5.833-71, 6.337-83) remains elusive, in spite of the wealth of discussion bestowed upon them in recent years. When the helmsman falls overboard in Book 5, according to the narrative, sea and sky are serene, but in the version which his spirit recounts to Aeneas in the underworld in Book 6, there is suggestion of rough seas, great waves rising and violent winter wind. On the other hand, the two accounts have not been developed in total separation, with the natural causation of a storm replacing the supernatural operation of the god Sleep as an explanation of Palinurus’ undoing. For, although Palinurus in his own version of events does not men tion Sleep—how could he, since the god came in human disguise?

Book 12 of the Aeneid is in many ways Turnus’ book: it begins with his name (Turnus ut…, 12.1) and ends with his life passing to the shades below (vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras, 12.952). His death completes the remorseless victory of Aeneas: the latter’s barbed final comment, ‘Pallas…Pallas’ (12.948) echoes the boast of Turnus, ‘Pallanta…Pallas’ (10.442). The death of Pallas in Book 10 changes the whole pattern of the action in the poem: Aeneas is thereafter at his most ruthless (e.g. 10.510-605; 11.81-2) and Turnus is at his most vulnerable (e.g. 10.668-88). It is Jupiter who makes it clear (to Juno, 10.607-32) that the balance has shifted, and it is Jupiter who increasingly takes a personal and threatening interest in what happens to Turnus. The realisation by Turnus (12.894-5) that Jupiter is an active hostis is uttered with bitterness, resignation and terror. It is the utterance of a man who genuinely expected events to go his way, the utterance of a deluded man. Turnus is forced by his imminent defeat to believe what previously seemed unbelievable — that Jupiter, far from being a patron god, is actively hostile to him.

Martial 9.79:

Oderat ante ducum famulos turbamque priorem

et Palatinum Roma supercilium:

at nunc tantus amor cunctis, Auguste, tuorum est

ut sit cuique suae cura secunda domus.

tam placidae mentes, tanta est reuerentia nostri,

tam pacata quies, tantus in ore pudor.

nemo suos — haec est aulae natura potentis —,

sed domini mores Caesarianus habet.

Martial’s ninth book of epigrams contains twenty-nine poems out of a total of one hundred and three which refer to Domitian in some way, providing the largest group of epigrams concerned with an individual in a single book of Martial. The suppression by Martial of his tenth book of epigrams and its reappearance with the Domitianic references expunged means that Book 9 is the last book in which poems to Domitian form an integral part; it can be expected therefore that Martial’s attitude toward Domitian will find its most confident expression in this book.